


Vending Machines are the Window to your Soul

by platehate



Category: Free!
Genre: Friendship/Love, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, makoharu hints, mild swearing, sourin hints
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-29
Updated: 2014-09-29
Packaged: 2018-02-19 05:02:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2375591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/platehate/pseuds/platehate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nanase Haruka and Yamazaki Sousuke; two boys who share a tenuous link - swimming and Rin.</p><p>A brush with a vending machine shows them just how well they know themselves, and in Sousuke's case, the answer is not much. Haru thinks he can help.</p><p>It works out, I suppose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vending Machines are the Window to your Soul

**Author's Note:**

> SouHaru that got hijacked by MakoHaru (but only a little). I'm not sorry.

 

Nanase Haruka. Yamazaki Sousuke.

For two people who haven’t been formally introduced, or ever enjoyed a proper conversation – for god’s sake, the only thing they have in common is _Rin_ – Sousuke sure stares at Haru a lot. Brief, hard, accusatory glances, shot over every now and then with those cold, sea green marbles the Samezuka kid has for eyes.

It becomes one of those things Haru dwells on absently, but if anyone (even _Makoto_ ) were to ask they’d only get one of his customary responses: a pregnant pause, averted eyes and a quietly muttered “betsuni”.

He figures it really isn’t that big of a deal.

 

*** * * ***

 

It doesn’t bode well, then, when the first words they exchange are of the abrasive sort. The sort that should be expected, I suppose, when one party is backed up against a vending machine with the other trying to step on his foot – as if he weren’t already threatening enough with his towering height or the hardness in his eyes. Well, technically words weren’t exchanged, because Sousuke grinds a single sentence out and then leaves before Haru might have had the chance to say anything. And Haru probably would have said nothing, but words don’t have to be spoken to be heard, do they? Besides, Sousuke’s kind of already stormed off in the time he took to refocus his stare.

The words hang heavy in the air between them as they step outside to rejoin their respective teammates.

_“Don’t ever get in Rin’s way again.”_

Haru thinks seriously for a moment about asking the others what the deal is with Sousuke, but the stir it would cause puts that thought out of his mind almost immediately. Just waiting and listening for any hints is fine, because soon enough Kisumi drops the fact that Sousuke’s shoulder is damaged right in their path.

What follows is not quite an epiphany, but close enough.

At the very least, Haru understands that _that guy has issues_.

Yeah.

 

*** * * ***

 

Sousuke can’t help but think of Haru the next time he comes face to face with a vending machine (he's been starting to avoid them for some reason, even in school). It happens to be right outside the department store where some of the Samezuka team have been shopping for swimsuits all morning. He stares at the grubby plastic and can faintly make out his reflection; fixes his eyes on their poorly mirrored counterparts; and all of a sudden the flintiness falls away and leaves him looking into a tangled mess of emotions that he doesn’t even _want_ to poke at. He tells himself that he’s fine with having them churn around repeatedly like a broken rinse cycle and then breaking down the fucking machine because there’s a pair of goggles in the barrel that accidentally got left in or something. _Yeah_ , right.

 _My brain needs to come up with simpler allegories for life_ , he thinks.The others gather round, and he gathers his composure smoothly.

Rin’s eyes skip past the vending machine and come to rest on the fence behind it. It reminds him of Haru and all those times last year when they took turns boxing each other in, both literally and figuratively. He doesn’t exactly have time for reminiscing though, since he’s busy stopping Momotarou from glomping his sister. Somewhere in the back of his head, Rin supposes he can grudgingly stomach the idea of Gou dating the former captain – but this first-year idiot? _God, please, no_.

Nitori’s the only one who speaks, asking _would senpai like anything from here_?

Sousuke absently shakes his head, and wishes with all his goddam might that just for once, his heart could be as vacant as Nanase’s stare is. Nice and light and empty. 

On the train home, he stares out of the window unseeingly and daydreams about pools of limpid blue; wonders what it’d be like to drown in them.

 

*** * * ***

 

When Haru and Makoto walk home together as usual, Haru stops short at the sight of a random vending machine. It’s ever so slight, but Makoto can sense that the object holds some kind of significance for his friend. So he just quirks his lips in that warm, familiar way and waits for Haru to indicate they should continue walking.

A few seconds, before Haru meets Mako’s eyes and silently says _let’s go_ and they move off.

Facing Mako is a bit of a trial this time, since looking at his eyes brings to mind another pair of green orbs (rather unwelcome, Haru thinks) – but at the end of the day, he muses, everything’s fine as it is, since he does like the colour of Makoto’s eyes better. They're softer around the edges, too.

In hindsight, the difference between them is clear as day - he's been pitting a gaze that welcomes against one that shuts people out.

Haru shrugs. _Maybe that's why_ , he thinks to himself, _Makoto's eyes feel like home and Sousuke's do not_.

 

*** * * ***

 

But.

Haru makes up his mind to do something for Sousuke too. He feels almost compelled to, really, because Sousuke doesn’t have someone like Makoto around for him (Rin isn’t too good with _issues_ himself, and Nitori is completely out of the question because he’s only focused on abovementioned senpai).

Tsk.

 

*** * * ***

 

An opening comes round eventually, when Sousuke shows up at Iwatobi Swimming Club out of the blue _just tagging along with Rin, just curious, just here on impulse_.

Haru’s the one who finds him staring down a vending machine, alone in an empty corridor. He hasn’t changed out of his white Samezuka gakuran, and he’s staring at that vending machine like it can give him _answers_. Sousuke doesn’t turn, but his back seems to tense as he becomes aware of Haru’s presence and the muffled tap of his outdoor shoes coming in slow, measured strides towards him across the tiles. By the time Haru reaches him Sousuke is trembling slightly from the effort of not visibly breaking down – it’s just as well that the Iwatobi boy doesn’t try to touch him or anything, because he’d likely be violently flung off or something.

Instead, he positions himself behind the Samezuka swimmer, where he can look right over the taller boy’s shoulder and see his own eyes reflected in the grubby plastic, too. The blue pair rises calmly to meet the sea green ones, holds them for a split second before silently dropping to _the shoulder_ – the one that was injured.

_Oh, fuck, he knows._

Haru meets Sousuke’s eyes in their reflection again and the latter thinks, with no small amount of bitter irony, of how people say the eyes are the window to the soul. _On the contrary_ , he snorts to himself, it would seem that _vending machines_ have become the only window through which he can stand to scrutinize his eyes and whatever unsavoury bits of his soul that they bare – windows to windows.

Gosh. Ain’t that capital?

He can just imagine it now: _Yoroshiku desu. My name is Yamazaki Sousuke, I’m from Samezuka Academy, and Vending Machines are the Window to My Soul._

He snaps back to reality when Haru takes one step closer, in an eerily bizarre simulation of their previous encounter, albeit with reversed roles and positions. Sousuke holds his breath when Haru lifts a hand and brings it up to ghost over the tight muscles of his neck, before letting nimble fingers trail down to his shoulder and smooth the fabric of the gakuran gently.

Sousuke’s head is half-turned away now, but the corners of his eyes are pinned on the reflection he sees in the stupid grubby plastic of the fucking vending machine. He watches as Haru gradually leans forward and places fucking _butterfly_ kisses on his shoulder from behind –

He gives in and bangs his head lightly on the plastic display front, curls his fists up tightly next to his temples, lets himself cry a little. Then a lot. The kisses stop. Dimly his brain registers that Nanase has moved to sit on the floor next to his feet, and he instinctively shifts to meet those eyes again as the other boy sighs.

Haru looks away and Sousuke slides down to sit next to him in the same movement, so that they’re now side by side.

“You know,” Haru says, “you’re alright. You’ll be alright.”

Sousuke swears the look in those blue eyes is almost a smile, and he feels so fucking _comforted_ and _warm_ and _no longer insecure_ that fresh tears well up, even though what Haru said is only a fraction of the gazillion other things that he can see through those windows. About time he properly faced all those accumulated childhood insecurities, he supposes, as hard as that seems (he has heard that Rin went through and recovered from an asshole phase as well, so why not?).

But for now sitting here with Nanase Haruka in comfortable silence is all that matters, so he tilts his head to the side and angles it to comfortably rest against Haru’s shoulder.

 

*** * * ***

 

Makoto and Rin stumble upon them dozing off, wake them with soft chuckles. Eyes meet. _Haru. Sousuke. Let’s go home._

 _Yes, let’s_ , Sousuke thinks as he’s helped up and chided and has his hair teasingly ruffled; as he gives the vending machine an appreciative farewell pat.

_You’re going home with Yamazaki Sousuke, and vending machines are the window to his soul._

He proffers a rare sort of smile as they part.

 

*** * * ***

**Author's Note:**

> So I had a dream in which someone suggested I write a SouHaru fic -- idea stewed for a week and then morphed into this. No real idea where I was going with the story haha, only the words ‘vending machine’, ‘injured shoulder’ and ‘butterfly kisses’ stuck in my head and insisted on being included in the plot.  
> I apologize if anyone (read: Sousuke) was OOC as fuck, but I based this mostly on headcannon trajectory because I’m only halfway through Free! S2 and, you know, artistic license. *cough*  
> This work is un-beta’d, so any feedback would be much appreciated ;_; 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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